The $8,500 Gaming Table You Want

Recently I stumbled upon The Sultan Gaming Table. With a price tag of over $8K, it would have to be awesome: but it has little compartments for the players and DM as well as a drop-down playing surface. If you find the pricetag daunting then you are a sane person, and might instead want to look at the Emissary which starts at a "mere" $1,500 and has many of the same features. Honestly I just love the idea of having my minis on a playing surface underneath the dinner table. I ought to be allowed to expense one of these. I also wish they had more pictures and fewer renderings on the site.

Comments

It's Just A Table

[Obyron]

Get some first hand experience with carpentry and build yourself one. It's not difficult. Borrow some tools from friends and family if you need to, or possibly neighbors. Tell your friend you have a sheet of MDF or something and that you need to make some cuts with a table saw, and would he mind if you came over and used it for 15 minutes. Treat it as an excuse to socialize. Borrow your father-in-law's miter saw and pay him back with a case of beer. You'll get a lot more than 8500 dollars worth of enjoyment out of the process, for a very small fraction of the price, and you'll still get your geek table. And you'll get a good story out of it. The thing may not turn out perfect. You might have a drawer that sticks or something, but big fucking deal. What's their target audience? Millionaire gamers? Good luck with that.

Re:It's Just A Table

[Pojut]

Indeed.

I'm doing the same thing with a desk. I've been thinking about getting a tricked-out Ikea Galant setup, but figured out I could build something similar for about 1/4th the cost. When possible, do it yourself...this applies to just about anything. Costs less, you can get EXACTLY what you want, and you get the satisfaction of a job well done.

Re:It's Just A Table

[pedestrian crossing]

Heck, at that price, you could buy all of the tools as well as materials. Really, projects are just excuses to buy tools, right?

Re:It's Just A Table

[Chelloveck]

Get some first hand experience with carpentry and build yourself one.

But.. But... That won't be Heirloom Quality!

What's their target audience? Millionaire gamers? Good luck with that.

Have you checked the prices of games lately? Won't be long until millionaires are the only people who can afford to game...

"I say, Chauncy, don't roll your solid gold d12 there! You'll scratch my Sultan Table and Wooster will be hours buffing it out."

Re:It's Just A Table

[oldspewey]

This may be true to some extent, but I can also report from my own direct first-hand experience that there have been times I've seen an item in the store for what I thought was an exorbitant price, and I decided to build it myself instead. And while I did get the "enjoyment" payoff you mention, after buying all the wood, fasteners, hinges, paint, etc. (not to mention a specialized tool if the project requires one) I sometimes found that I spent as much or more than the "exorbitant" item would have cost in the first place. There are certain economies of scale offered by bulk container ships and million-square-foot factories that a lone handyman working in his garage or basement can never match.

Having said that, the finished product I built by hand always turns out way cooler than any store-bought alternative.

Re:It's Just A Table

[Rogerborg]

Every morning you wake up breathing is an excuse to buy tools.

Re:It's Just A Table

[idontgno]

I don't intend to need even that excuse.

Hmm... where have I heard the phrase "zombie carpenter" before?

Re:It's Just A Table

[eln]

Sure, I could build it, but I hate carpentry and I know from experience I would get no joy out of it. So, if I were the kind of person who was really obsessed with gaming and had $8500 to throw around (I'm not and I don't), I might buy this table. I would certainly not build it, because that would be a huge pain in the ass. Different people have different interests, and carpentry is not one of mine by any stretch of the imagination.

Obviously the market segment for this thing is limited, but the vast selection of furniture stores out there tells me there are plenty of people who would rather pay a premium for furniture to avoid having to build it themselves.

Re:It's Just A Table

[idontgno]

But.. But... That won't be Heirloom Quality!

This is Slashdot. How many regulars do you anticipate ever having heirs? (Unless someone perfects budding or full-organism mitosis)

Re:It's Just A Table

[geekoid]

In furniture, Heirloom Quality has a pretty specific meaning. It would take years of carpentry expreience to make a tqable like that at that quality level.

They define what they mean:
http://www.geekchichq.com/Theory_Conjecture/Heirloom_Quality/Heirloom_Quality.html

Seriously, you sound like a non geek making fun of USB 3.

Games are not that expensive.

Savage Worlds: 10 bucks for the main book.
DnD 4e retail 34.00 The first Players Handbook in 1978 was 20 bucks. Calculate inflation into that
In 1995, Computer games where 30/40 bucks.
Ticket to ride, 40 bucks: The is the price of equivalent quality board games in the 1980s.

Gaming is not becoming more expensive If anything, it's cheaper.

Re:It's Just A Table

[Lumpy]

A buddy of mine plays with a set of polyhedral dice that cost him $3800.00 for the set. They are cut from meteorites. his D20 cost $450.00 on it's own.

Re:It's Just A Table

[Mister Whirly]

When possible, do it yourself...this applies to just about anything.

Except surgery.

Re:It's Just A Table

[Mister Whirly]

Gaming is not becoming more expensive If anything, it's cheaper.

They make the games affordable, but then where they get you is the furniture. Sneaky bastards.

Re:It's Just A Table

[twidarkling]

You missed the first part:
When possible.

Surgery on yourself is rarely possible :p

Well, unless you're Rambo, then you just need a bullet, some matches, a knife, and some fishing line.

Re:It's Just A Table

[vlm]

Tell your friend you have a sheet of MDF or something and that you need to make some cuts with a table saw

The "real thing" is made out of hardwoods instead of particle board. Next time you visit Home Depot or whatever, check the price of some nice chunks of oak. Also realize hardwoods are more expensive/difficult to work with... Given a hammer to start it, large pieces of cheapass pine darn near allow self tapping screws, whereas oak is so tough you'll practically need a metalworking tap set to screw it together.

Leading to my anecdote of the day, last week I was trying to build some model-RR stuff using some Oak (long story why I selected oak). So, a dull made in China home depot drill bit gets hot, seizes in the hole, and twists clean off. It was a shear fracture in a drill press not a "I bent it using my handheld drill". Well OK use the next smallest drill, a 1/32 smaller for pilot holes. Install a cheap made in China home depot screw, its getting a bit tight in there, twist IT off in the hole. Not sure if I should be swearing at China, home depot, or myself, or all three! Thats what you have to look forward to, when working with hardwoods. Now, working in cheapass pine or particle board, you can practically install screws with a hammer, I've seen illegals do that with deck screws, as long as you're careful not to split the wood.

And you'll get a good story out of it.

"So, I rolled a 2d10 to see how many appendages I chopped off, with no saving throw"

A table saw is probably the most dangerous large wood power tool the average person can buy, with the exception of a radial arm saw (are those even sold anymore?). Although it depends how you want to look at it. A jointer table probably won't remove your entire arm and its probably impossible to hurt your leg unless you're really doin it wrong, but it'll take off fingers. On the other hand a table saw is extraordinarily effective at hand and finger amputation. Then theres stuff thats only dangerous when you do something blatantly stupid rather than just bad luck, like stand in the line of fire when running wood thru a planer that occasionally catches and throws the board, although supposedly "that never happens anymore" due to safety stuff. Yeah whatever.

Re:It's Just A Table

[Chris Mattern]

Hmm... where have I heard the phrase "zombie carpenter" before?

Jesus is back, and he's here to eat your brains *and* swipe your power tools!

Re:It's Just A Table

[Mister Whirly]

Surgery on yourself is entirely possible, even to the untrained amateur. There is nothing stopping me (well, maybe common sense) from grabbing a knife and cutting into my body. Now successful surgery on yourself on the other hand...

Re:It's Just A Table

[quadrox]

Don't want to sound too negative, but while the quality of the carpentry itself may be "heirloom quality", the actual table looks like shit.

Seriously... If I was to shell out that much money, it should at least look somewhat elegant.

Re:It's Just A Table

[Aranykai]

And he still rolls ones just like the rest of us.

Re:It's Just A Table

[tsalmark]

I'm not sure want spawn budding from my shoulder. Full-organism mitosis on the other hand has the side benefit of massive weight loss.

Re:It's Just A Table

[Thud457]

Damn you slashdot! Cut that crap out!
http://crystalcaste.com/mm5/merchant.mvc?Screen=CTGY&Store_Code=CC&Category_Code=XS
http://www.toplessrobot.com/2009/04/the_10_most_shameful_rpg_dice.php

Wouldn't meteorite, steel or iron be affected by magnetic fields? Or is it assumed anyone this obsessive is honest to a fault?

Re:It's Just A Table

[corbettw]

Behold, these are my brains, which are given up for you. Whosoever shall eat of them shall not die but shall live forever.

Re:It's Just A Table

[BobMcD]

In college I successfully performed oral surgery on my own mouth (gory story ahead):

I had a horrible wisdom tooth, growing in 'sideways'. It would surge 'up' occasionally, making my whole jaw swell and causing horrible pain. I got the notion that if the thing could hit air, it might just stop trying to come in...

I sterilized the tip of my Kansas City Board of Trade pen knife with my lighter, and went to work on it in the men's room. Five minutes later, I had successfully removed a flap of skin over that tooth.

It has never hurt since.

I tell this story and people are shocked, but I grew up on the farm. Sometimes the common sense solutions work, sometimes they don't. But my next stop would have been at a dentist (without either funds nor insurance), so I did my best to take care of it. In my case, it worked.

Re:It's Just A Table

[hey!]

Even easier. Start with a pool table, strip out the bits you don't want, and trim the table with whatever geegaws you want. That appears to be what this company did.

The big advantage over building from scratch: the boring generic "table" part is already done for you, and you can concentrate on the gaming part. In fact, if you made a kind of arrangement that sat in the pockets of the pool table, you could remove the whole thing and still play pool if you wanted to.

This is pretty much what it means to be a geek. To the average person, the "constructed" part of his environment, the things he lives with, that is something fixed. He can buy new stuff or throw old stuff away. If you are geek, no thing's form has to be regarded as fixed.

Practically everything I own has been modified in some way. When I got my Kindle, my first thought was that the metal back was too slippery. I considered covering it with rubberized paint, but settled instead by putting a couple of strips of two inch velcro loop tape to it which makes it easier to hold. I applied velcro hook tape to the slip cover so the two pieces could be handled as one unit. I have a leatherette (vinyl) zip portfolio that I carry paper, writing implements and my kindle in, and I slapped velcro loop on the inside to give the kindle (inside its slipcover) crush space. Since I had velcro hook left over I slapped that on the outside and now I can stand the portfolio with it's spine up and it is a reading stand.

People see that and say, "isn't that clever." But it's not. Once you realize you can turn any surface you aren't otherwise using into a reading stand by slapping some velcro tape on it, it's obvious.

Re:It's Just A Table

[ArhcAngel]

We need a mod for Interesting/Hilarious/Scary

Re:It's Just A Table

[fm6]

Another "everybody's exactly like me" post. I took carpentry in Junior High, but I sucked at it, and have only a single (really ugly) bookcase to show for my training. Maybe you can throw together something like this without a lot of effort. I never could hope to attempt something like this, and I suspect most people are in the same category.

Don't get me wrong, I admire (and envy) people who are good with their hands. And even though my own experience was less than positive, I bemoan that fact that most kids don't get a chance to take shop anymore. But dude, people have different strengths and weaknesses.

And, not incidentally, $8K is not that much to pay for this kind of furniture, if it's well made. Whether it's worth it to an individual is a personal call. But if you're a really serious gamer (I'm certainly not) it strikes me as a decent investment.

Re:It's Just A Table

[ultranova]

I can't help noticing that the guy who's holding the eye surgery device he invented is wearing glasses. So I guess this is a either a clever troll or an incompetent scam.

Re:It's Just A Table

[interiot]

John 6:51-58 (KJV)

51 "I am the reanimated bread which came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will 'live' forever; and the bread that I shall give is My flesh, which I shall give for the life of the world." 52 The Jews therefore quarreled among themselves, saying, "How can this Man give us His flesh to eat?" 53 Then Jesus said to them, "Most assuredly, I say to you, unless you eat the brain of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you. 54 "Whoever eats My brain and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will reanimate him up at the last day. 55 "For My brain is food indeed, and My blood is drink indeed. 56 "He who eats My brain and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in him. 57 "As the living Father sent Me, and I live because of the Father, so he who feeds on Me will live because of Me. 58 "This is the bread which came down from heaven; not as your fathers ate the manna, and are dead. He who eats this bread will be a zombie forever."

Re:It's Just A Table

[nuckfuts]

Good god - what utter conceit! You look at a large and intricate piece of hardwood furniture, with all kinds of drawers, sliding parts, and recesses, put together with numerous dovetail joints no less, and you think anyone with access to a table saw and a miter saw could build one.

The sheer arrogance of this assumption leads me to believe you've never built anything like this before. If you had, you'd know that even building a single drawer using dovetails is not a trivial endeavour. Add to that the challenge of making many drawers, selecting and mounting hardware that aligns them nicely and lets them slide in and out smoothly. And after you have it all built, there's the significant task of applying a nice finish to the wood.

There is a huge difference between knowing basic carpentry and knowing how to make hardwood furniture. You clearly have no grasp of how much time and skill a project like this requires. It involves hours and hours of planning, measuring, cutting, machining, fitting, gluing, clamping, sanding, and finishing. It requires a sizable workshop with an extensive array of tools, and the quality of the results is directly proportional to the quality of the tools you employ. Don't kid yourself that you could easily build such a thing.

Re:It's Just A Table

[SpeedBump0619]

Yes, but he rolls ones FROM SPACE.

Re:It's Just A Table

[stonewallred]

Very badly infected in-grown toenail, was doing hard time in a backwoods NC prison farm on 24 hour a day lock up for hitting a guard (long fucking story, chalk it to being 17 and strung out)and they were denying me medical care. Took a razor blade from a disposable razor I had hooked, and a pack of matches, made a toilet paper burner (cone of tightly would toilet paper, burns hot and slow with little smoke)tore the staple out of the matches, melted it into a toothbrush, used the razor after sterilizing it in the fire to cut the toenail out. I then started heating the staple until it got red hot, using a small piece of sheet wrapped around the base to keep it from getting too hot and falling out of the toothbrush. I used it repeatedly to cauterize and burn out the infected tissue. The things we will do when it is necessary doesn't surprise me anymore.

Stop with the Slashvertisement...

[blahplusplus]

... thank you.

Re:Stop with the Slashvertisement...

[AP31R0N]

Yeah, we don't want to know about things we can buy. Like computers and books and video games and and and....

Make it cooler

[Tisha_AH]

What would really be cool is if the table surface was a touch LCD display that you could put digitized maps up on.

Re:Make it cooler

[oldspewey]

A touch-sensitive table-sized LCD gaming surface would be something I'd actually consider spending $8K on.

The Sultan on PVP

[Mr_Blank]

The Sultan was recently featured in a PvP comic classic.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Price tag

[mcgrew]

If you find the pricetag daunting then you are a sane person

If you don't find it daunting because you live in a fifty million dollar house and drive a hundred thousand dollar car, finding the price tag not daunting doesn't make you insane.

Hell, it hasn't been that long since a decent gaming PC cost that much. Now paying $5000 for a bottle of wine? That marks you as insane even if you're Bill Gates.

Re:Price tag

[chill]

Yeah, there is a whole category of people who have to be SEEN to be rich, or they aren't happy. Being rich isn't good enough. People have to see you spend absurd amounts of money on non-necessities and blow it off like it was no big deal. These people have a tendency to mention prices a lot, name drop and not-so-subtly brag.

For regular folks, the equivalent is an iPod. iPods aren't for people who like listening to music. They're for people who like to be SEEN listening to music. You see them constantly futzing around with play lists and songs in public. Hell, I've always just set the playlists on my PC, picked what I want to listen to and drop it in my pocket! But that defeats the purpose. I could have just some common MP3 player, and not be cool like the iPod crowd.

Supporting evidence -- the large aftermarket for white Apple or Apple-like earbuds. It makes people THINK you have an iPod in your jacket, so you must be cool.

Ditto Gucci purses, Manolo Blanik shoes, and...wait...did I just describe the entire fashion industry?

Re:News?

[Nadaka]

If the thing is made from the materials and quality of work that they claim? The price is not that unreasonable. A standard hand crafted cabinet or table made from those materials with old fashioned proper construction will cost thousands of dollars.

Okay, have had one of these in action.

[Chas]

Had one of these on loan from the GeekChic guys in our booth at GenCon last year.

VERY
NICE
GAME
TABLE

If I had space and the spare cash to front for one, I'd buy one.

I've seen people ragging about not being able to sit around one. This is what the fold-down desks are for.

I've seen people complaining that the drawers would get in the way. They don't. PERIOD. You don't leave them open during play. The drawers are for storage.

I've seen people ragging on the price. Look at the cost of nice hardwood furniture. And I said NICE. My mother's a friggin' oak fanatic. So I know how pricey this stuff gets.

Their prices are only outrageous when viewed in a vacuum. People are talking about being able to buy the materials and tools for less. Sure. If your labor is worthless and you have already figured out all the joinery and other neat tricks that they've incorporated into one of these tables.

Very likely though, you have not. As such, you're paying a skilled craftsman for labor.

Sure, you can buy a pool table or a folding table for a lot less. But the utility for gaming is also a lot less.

Re:Okay, have had one of these in action.

[infinite9]

I've seen people ragging on the price. Look at the cost of nice hardwood furniture. And I said NICE. My mother's a friggin' oak fanatic. So I know how pricey this stuff gets.

Their prices are only outrageous when viewed in a vacuum. People are talking about being able to buy the materials and tools for less. Sure. If your labor is worthless and you have already figured out all the joinery and other neat tricks that they've incorporated into one of these tables.

Very likely though, you have not. As such, you're paying a skilled craftsman for labor.

I'm a computer programmer and play a lot of RPGs. I'm also a woodworking fanatic. I've spent the last 10 years collecting power tools, and I don't mean hand drills and jigsaws. I have a complete woodworking shop in my 3-car garage. I had to put in a separate 100amp subpanel just for the shop. I have probably $30,000 in tools. I've made maybe half a dozen pieces of furniture so far. I would have made more, but my time is limited.

I could probably make a decent attempt at this table and do fairly well. I'm sure mine wouldn't be as good. It takes skill to do this stuff, even with good tools. And the tools can be expensive. The dovetails for example take years of practice to be able to make them look perfect when doing them by hand. I can make perfect dovetails, but I use a $500 jig and two $200 routers. Even the router bits can be $5 to $40 a piece. And the hardwoods their using aren't cheap either. Things like oak, walnut, cherry, and maple can go from $2 to $8 a board-foot (144 cubic inches of wood), more (possibly 10x more) for figured wood. Then there's the finish. Getting it right is hard and takes hours of surface preparation. I still suck at this.

I'm amused by people's attitudes toward good furniture. People walk through furniture stores and ooh and ahh over the furniture. We have antique furniture now because it was made right in the past. The stuff you see today, most of it will fall apart in a few years. When I walk through furniture stores now, all I see are the shortcuts, finishing mistakes, and how that piece will fail.

People think that because you can buy a piece of crap particle board or MDF table at walmart for $50, that this table is outrageously priced. What's really happened is that your incomes have dropped so low that the real quality that we used to be able to afford is now beyond reach. I can't afford $8000 for a table. But I can certainly make nice ones now that my grandchildren will have in their houses.

Re:Okay, have had one of these in action.

[Anonymous Coward]

The hilarious part is that you can buy incredibly awesome stuff at auctions and junk shops for a fraction of what you pay for newly made lead-encrusted melamine and chipboard assembled by slaves.

Seriously, I paid $300 for my tiger oak dining room table with six book-matched leaves that store under the top. It was worth more than that 78 years ago when it was made, and it's only gotten prettier with time. All five legs were turned from single pieces of highly figured oak that were probably 6" squares to start with - just the wood would run you at least $300 today (and you can't even get an all-wooden sliding and storage mechanism like that today).

Good furniture costs money

[WarlockSquire]

For those complaining about the price tag: good quality furniture made from solid wood costs real money.
I spent over $1000 on black walnut (some highly figured) for a 7 drawer chest on chest I built last summer.
Probably spent close to 100 hours on it too.
Depending on the wood, $10, $20 or even $50 a board foot ( 1 square foot of wood, 1 inch thick) is not unusual.

That said, if it's cheap wood, or plywood with hardwood veneer, you should not be spending the same amount. (unless the veneer is exceedingly rare).

I wouldn't be surprised if there was well over $1000 of wood and hardware in it. (also wouldn't be surprise if it was crap).

Re:News?

[ShadowRangerRIT]

Agreed. My dad bought a non-gaming table of similar quality (some absurdly expensive very dark colored hardwood, 100% dry fitted, no glue or screws involved). He was kind of sheepish at the splurge; all I could get out of him is that it cost well over a thousand, but less than ten thousand. The additional complexity of building the Sultan to be stable while dry fitted despite the large number of parts, several of which are intended to move would require even tighter tolerances and justify a fairly high price.